MutoidMan Wrote:After years of wanting a new PC, I was finally able to call Falcon Northwest and place my order! Here's the nuts 'n' bolts: ICON Aluminum Chassis Silverstone 650Watt Power Supply Windows XP Home Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard AMD Athlon64 FX-57 (Falcon's going to try to OC it as far as they can on air; probably hit 3GHz) Zalman ZNPS7000LED ALCU - CPU Cooler Corsair TwinX 2048MB 3200XL-PT (4/512MB) 2x nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB PCIE - SLI 2x Maxtor DM-10 300GB SATA 16MB Cache (no raid) Sony 16X DVD-ROM Audigy II ZS Platinum I can't wait to see what TRON 2.0 will look like on this rig!

Tron 2.0 can only go so high, it probably won't look much different.

what i meant was that the graphics engine that the game is built around can only do so much.

a good example of what i'm talking about is playing stuff like quake 2.

no matter how powerful a machine you play it on, it is always going to be full of big pixels.

I can already play Tron 2.0 to the max settings [and if it was possible, then even further] it's impressive, but it soon becomes standard

i don't mean to bring you down. i'm just stating that the engine can only do so much.

That's one sweet sounding system, MutoidMan!

MutoidMan Wrote:I can't wait to see what TRON 2.0 will look like on this rig!

Yes - TRON 2.0 will be almost like a whole new game - with SWEET visuals galore!

When I play online, I, like yourself, can only play at a max res of 800x600 with all SFX turned off.

One of these days, I'll take the plunge in to a new PC myself.

MutoidMan Wrote:OK, but you're forgetting that the newer generations of video cards can really inprove visual quality with anisotropic filtering and antialiasing. In the case of the GeForce 7800, it has a new type of antialiasing called transparency antialiasing (of which there are two modes) that greatly improve quality when models are very thin -- think a chain link fence. With my current PC, I don't have the power to run TRON 2.0 (or any other fairly recent game) at 1024x768 without dropping frames and random freezes unless I turn off all the special effects. Even then it isn't always smooth going. I always have to play online multiplayer at 800x600 with everything turned off if I want to be competitive. With my new PC, I can have the best visual quality and great framerates, even while playing online. This is why I'm excited!!!

if you want to see a [B]REAL change in quality, get doom 3. I used to [only just] be able to play it on medium settings. there were no special effects, no high-res bump mapping and the sound quality was ok, but not great]
now i can play it on the ultra settings and...wow. now i can besk in the glory of simulated heat haze, textures that look as if the guys have just taken a photograph [with a state of the art camera] and sound quality that coul]d make someone wet themselves [figure of speech

MutoidMan Wrote: I do have DOOM 3, and I can barely play it at the rock bottom settings. I can barely imagine how good it's going to look on my new rig. So it sounds like someone else has upgraded recently. So spill! Whatcha got? There are a couple of hardware junkies here who are interested in this stuff.

well it wasn't a recent upgrade, so all this stuff is gonna sound pretty basic by today's standards, but okay. also, i'm not 100% savvy with what i've got, but i'll try.

first things first, the original computer:
motherboard: i'm not too sure. but it was an AMD one
processor: AMD athlon 1.5ghz
memory:256 mb DDR
graphics card: nvidia Geforce 2
sound card: not too sure, soundblaster audigy something-or-other
[that's all i can remember]i could play tron 2.0 to the max on that

after the first upgrade [did this one myself]:
Motherboard: [same as above]processor:[same as avove]memory: 768 mb DDR
graphics card: nvidia geforce FX 5200
sound card: [same as above][i could play doom 3 at minimum. started chugging at medium]
after the second upgrade [this was a christmas present end of 2004]
Motherboard: Abit A17 Guru intel compatible
Processor: intel pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
memory [same as first upgrade]graphics card [same as first upgrade]sound card: none. the sound processor in the motherboard is more advanced now.]
I can now play doom 3 on ultra [but it runs better on high-not all that much different] and i was almost literally blown away by the differences!

believe me, you'll love it. play it how it was supposed to be played

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MutoidMan Wrote:Your upgraded box looks good!

it get's the job done [quickly]

And today, after years of upgrades & additions: Motherboard/Chipset: No change CPU: Slot 1 1GHz PIII Memory: 1GB SDRAM Video Card: Visiontek GeForce 3 Sound Card: Creative Audigy 2 Second Sound Card:Creative Soundblaster Awe64 Gold (in an IDE slot for old DOS games so I don't have to bother with emulation)

here is another thing i don't understand. how come people with systems that are below the specifications able to play doom 3? it says minimum 1.5Ghz on the box, yet it is now available on the x-box which has a processor of 733Mhz

what is up with that?

My System Rig pages at AnandTech:

Old MutoidMach VNew MutoidMach V

awsome setup...but why no raid?

Since your going pretty much all out, why not get a couple raptors and do a raid 0 setup? Also I'd think about getting a larger power supply. Your going to be really taxing a 650 watt unit. Please post some pics when the rig gets in !

Prankster bit Wrote:woah! your computer must have been REALLY struggling

On the games from just this past year especially. I waited as long as I possibly could before getting a new PC.

Prankster bit Wrote:anywho, to me it feels like a mortal sin to say "playing" doom 3 [now] a much more apprporiate word is "experience" and you too can now "experience" Doom 3 to the fullest [possibly] Happy Demon-Hunting, MutoidMan!

Thank you, I shall enjoy getting the bejesus scared out of me!

kmon Wrote:awsome setup...but why no raid?

You'll be happy to learn I've called them up and had them set up the two 300GB Maxtors in a RAID 0 configuration. With NCQ and 16MB cache each, this will be one stupid-fast PC!